President Donald Trump just made it easier to fire federal government workers.
Via a set of executive orders Trump will sign, workers who receive a poor performance review will have just 30 days – down dramatically from 120 – to improve, as Talking Points Memo reports. TPM adds the new executive orders will also:
- Encourage federal agencies to terminate poor performers rather than suspending them.
- Direct federal agencies to renegotiate their union contracts, and make those contracts publicly available online “so American people can see them.”
- Encouraging agencies to conclude labor negotiations in less than a year.
- Severely restrict the use of federal worker unions’ “official time” — which elected shop stewards currently use to mediate workplace grievances. Going forward, federal workers can spend no more that 25 percent of their time on union or other non-agency business.
- Charge unions rent for the use of federal office space for that “official time” work.
Meanwhile, the White House isn’t responding to questions asking if the move aligns with his “deep state” conspiracy theories, according to Buzzfeed.
“Senior administration officials did not give an explicit answer either way when asked if they believed in the so-called ‘deep state.’ Instead, officials said on a Friday conference call with reporters that the new actions were about ‘efficient use of government resources.'”
The head of the nation’s largest union that represents civilian, non-postal employees disagrees.
Calling the move “democracy busting,” American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox Sr. said: “Our government is built on a system of checks and balances to prevent any one person from having too much influence.”
Cox says, “President Trump’s executive orders will undo all of that. This administration seems hellbent on replacing a civil service that works for all taxpayers with a political service that serves at its whim.”
Trump has a history of tweeting about the so-called “deep state.”